Highlights

Society of Women Writers Keynote speaker Diane Armstrong is a Holocaust survivor s born in Poland. She is the bestselling author of six books. Her latest novel, The Collaborator, was published in September last year. Member Speaker Christine Sykes' will discuss her debut novel The Changing Room.

Ashley Kalagian Blunt joins for a chat about Australian identity and culture through the eyes of a slightly anxious Canadian. Her new book How to be Australian presents a fresh, funny and heartfelt view of Life Down Under from an outsider’s perspective in the tradition of They’re a Weird Mob,

Writers often use the past to generate our fiction. This talk and hands-on workshop with Roslyn McFaland will offer ways of transforming your memories to re-invigorate your imagination, which can then fuel your fiction in fresh and exciting ways.

Join historian Mark Dunn as he reveals the fascinating colonial history of the Hunter Valley, the second British penal settlement in Australia. With stories about convicts, white settlers and the Aboriginal clans who were uprooted, Mark also uncovers the brutal side of the British settlement and a long-forgotten massacre.

With travel restrictions being eased, but still in place, this is the perfect time to discover Sydney's hidden treasures online. John August shares the historic, engineering and geological marvels in Sydney and its surrounds that he has discovered over the years, along with some curiosities that we might normally pass by.

Dr Antony Ernst, a frequent and popular guest lecturer on opera, will speak about Richard Wagner's epic music drama, "Der Ring des Nibelungen". He has worked as a dramaturg, opera director, translator, writer, lecturer and artistic planner, most recently as orchestra director of the Royal Danish Orchestra, the world’s oldest orchestra.